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Dessert

Cream Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, tapioca, eggs, and sugar, topped with meringue or jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Soak the tapioca in the milk for one hour, or until it is transparent.

  3. Remove from the stove.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.

  2. Serve hot with lemon sauce.

Top and brown

  1. Cover with a layer of jam or jelly.

  2. Make a meringue with the egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue in the oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens and the custard is built on.
Tapioca
Its starch swells in the hot milk and thickens the pudding to a soft, creamy set.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, creamy texture when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavour of the milk and eggs.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the meringue its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Soak the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca starch must fully hydrate in the hot milk to swell and thicken evenly. If it is under-soaked, the pudding stays grainy or chewy instead of smooth and creamy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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